


Through Adversity to the Stars

by homosociality



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Captain Britain Corps, Incursions (Marvel), M/M, Multiverse, Otherworld
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:56:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235091
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/homosociality/pseuds/homosociality
Summary: Erik Lehnsherr is Captain Britain. Charles Xavier is Captain Britain. They fall in love.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	Through Adversity to the Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InsertSthMeaningful](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/gifts).



They meet at a Captain Britain mixer. Erik is new, and resentful—”I’m not even British,” he’d said to Merlyn when he’d bestowed upon him the Amulet of Right, and Merlyn had said, “But in your heart, a lion roars,” like that meant _anything,_ and now he’s responsible for the health of not just a nation that slyly turned away hundreds of thousands of his people seeking asylum during the war but the entire _multiverse,_ which seems to turn around the friction of reality of one little island—and he literally bumps into Charles, who is adjusting his sash and paying no attention whatsoever to the goings-on around him. “Watch it,” Erik snaps.

 _My apologies,_ Charles says, even though his sash is in his teeth as he fiddles with the knot with both hands. _Oh._ Oh. _You’re a mutant, too, aren’t you?_

“I—yes?” Erik says, caught off guard.

 _There aren’t many of us in the corps,_ Charles says—telepathically, Erik realizes now. _A few Braddocks, but the main one that Merlyn likes as Captain Britain isn’t a mutant, though all his family is. It’s enough to give one a complex. They call us witch-breed here, did you know? I like it. It’s rather quaint._

“I—yes,” Erik says, his mind reeling. Charles has that effect on people, he finds out later. Barrages them with the full force of his personality and leaves them confused and strangely charmed. “Yes, it’s… menacing.”

Charles finishes with his sash and holds out a hand. “Charles Xavier, Earth-39348,” he says cheerfully. “And you?”

“Erik,” he says, “Lehnsherr. Earth…” he tries to remember what Merlyn had told him, “901.”

“Oh, a triple-digiter,” Charles says cheerfully. “I always wonder if lower numbers are closer to the nexus of reality, or some such. Merlyn says no, except for 001—something to do with Spiders—but I always have trouble believing him. There’s something shifty about that man, aside from the way he can slip through realities to recruit all of us. Come on,” he says to Erik, “I’ll give you the tour of Otherworld,” and standing on the balcony of the Starlight Citadel, wind blowing through his hair and overlooking the glittering realm of Avalon, Erik falls in love, though he doesn’t know it yet, though he’s barely aware of love as an emotional concept, distant and dead with his mother.

Charles, he’ll think later, knew before he did, because Erik remembers him stumbling over his own feet. Erik raised an eyebrow, amused, and caught Charles looking at him with such pure astonishment—but then his expression had rearranged into a look of puppyish enthusiasm, and he said nothing, nothing until over a game of chess in the Starlight Citadel’s library, when he can’t take it anymore and shoves aside the chess pieces and nearly has Charles right over the chess table—would have, if it weren’t for Spider-UK’s giggling from where he’s perched upside-down on the ceiling. “Don’t worry,” he chirps cheerfully, a camera dangling from his fingers. “This definitely isn’t going into the Captain Britain Times.”  
  
  
  
It’s hard. They visit each other in their own realities and confuse the masses when two Captain Britains sally forth to ward off the otherworldly enemies of Britain. But being mutants and being Captain Britain in a time before mutants become known—helps, actually. In both of their worlds, Britain becomes a bastion of mutant safety while the rest of the world remains suspicious and fearful of them. It could be worse, they know. It could be so much worse. They look into other worlds sometime and cringe away from what they see. Erik tells himself, constantly—and Charles tells him constantly, too, which ought to be annoying but is really reassuring—that their jurisdiction is their own reality and the Otherworld, and nowhere else. It’s up to the _thems_ in those realities—Magneto and Professor X, more often than not, and Charles cackles at their names but Erik thinks it has a nice ring to it, _Magneto_ , if he weren’t Captain Britain—to change their worlds.

When _The Sun_ gets a picture of him ripping Charles’s mask off after an Kree warrior punches him through Big Ben and delivering a relieved, desperate kiss, the backlash is at first terrible, and then the gay rights movement gets a major boost. They start throwing parades on the anniversary of the kiss; they invite him to come. Some people dress up as him, except all in leather. It’s good to be a celebrity. Weird, but good.

Most of the time, though, they meet in the Starlight Citadel, or on multiversal patrol. Merlyn tries to give them the patrols together; he knows what it’s like to love someone who is divided from you by the very rules of reality, Charles suspects; Erik thinks he’s too keen to assign everyone a romantic motive, but that’s how they got together, so he can’t complain.

“I hate kobolds,” Charles mutters as they stand, back to back, swords drawn, standing against the horde of mindless lizardfolk swarming at the gates of Earth-50948.

“Come on, Charles,” Erik says, and uses his power to twirl his sword in the manner he knows Charles finds particularly sexy, “live a little. Slay some lizards.”  
  
  
  
He wonders what happens in the worlds where he chose the Sword of Might instead and became Lionheart. Lionheart is brave—Lionheart is fierce. His own Lionheart, a shape-shifter named Raven, is clever and quick and has no need for the Sword, with how her body is her weapon. But Lionheart is not charged with the protection of all realities the way Captain Britain is. Lionheart does not fall in love with her counterpart across the multiverse.

He wonders if Lionheart’s soulmate, like his own, happened to be born in another reality, and he aches for her. In their bedroom at the Starlight Citadel, he stares at the freckles on Charles’s back and thinks of all the Charleses, all the Eriks, all the ways in which they might meet and not meet, and hopes—he _hopes_ —that the Charles Xavier of Earth-901 is happy. He doesn’t know if this is right, but he knows it is irrevocable. Captain Britain and Captain Britain, until the end of the multiverse.  
  
  
  
The end of the multiverse comes sooner than expected.  
  
  
  
They’re recalled back to the Starlight Citadel—something about a Mapmaker—but neither of them listen. Their worlds aren’t like the others’, replete with “superheroes” who can come up with solutions, violent or otherwise, for the worlds appearing in the sky. It is 1964 in Erik’s world, 1966 in Charles’s. All their worlds have are them and a handful of others. All their _universes_ have are them and a handful of others.

Earth-39348 hangs in the sky over Earth-901, and Erik has responsibilities. He has love, and he has regrets, but above all he has a _people_ to protect, mutants and humans, Jews and gentiles, every one of them is in his hands.

“Don’t do this,” Charles says, tears already spilling from his eyes, sword angled to parry the blow he knows will come.

“And let both our universes die?” Erik chokes out.

“There must be another way,” Charles sobs.

“You must know there isn’t,” Erik says. He draws his sword.

He knew. He knew that he wasn’t meant to have beautiful things. This is the cost; this is the cost of every precious life in his hands: Charles’s wet blue eyes, his nevertheless sure grip on his sword, the determination in his brow, every precious life in Charles’s hands. If only they were the same as his own.

The moment their swords meet, he feels himself break.  
  
  
  
In the end, he can’t go through with it. He knows he’s a better fighter than Charles. He knows that Charles is broken, that the reality of what they’re being asked to do has broken him, and he stands with his sword poised above Charles’s heart, and he knows that both their realities are screaming as the earths come closer and closer—

—and he throws his sword to the side and stretches his arms up and _feels_ it, feels the magnetic pulse of Earth-39348 as, for a brief moment, they exist in the same plane. He _feels_ the weight of another earth bearing down on his own, and with all his strength, with all the power behind him as Captain Britain, as defender of his reality and every reality, he _pushes_ it away, and he screams, he knows this will kill him. It will kill him. He feels blood vessels burst in his eyes and his arms tremble with the strain, but if he does this it will be worth it, worth it, worth it.

And then the earth curves again, and is back on track to collide with his own, and as blackness slips over his vision, as Charles cries out and catches him, all he knows is that he’s failed. He failed.

 _Charles_ , he thinks, and wonders if he can hear him before The End.  
  
  
  
After that—

is… confusing.  
  
  
  
A boot prods him in the ribs. “You all right, sir?” says a voice he would know—anywhere, anywhere.

He opens his eyes. “Charles?” he groans.

“How did you know my name?”

It takes him a minute to focus on those blue, blue eyes, which are staring at him without a hint of recognition. Erik has spent enough time in the multiverse to recognize that particular expression, though he hadn’t even been sure if there was still a multiverse until this moment. He puts on his friendly Captain Britain smile, runs his fingers through his hair and notices his helmet is gone, takes Charles’s offered hand and stands. “My name is Erik,” he says, because he can’t quite bring himself to call himself Captain Britain, not after he’s failed so badly, failed everyone so badly. “Who are you?”

“Charles Xavier,” this Charles says, with something strange about his accent that Erik can’t place. “But I should be asking you that. You fell from the sky, you know. A regular spaceman.”

“Yeah,” Erik mutters. “A regular spaceman.”

He finds out what’s wrong soon enough; it’s 1892 where he is, and he’s in the American West. Charles leads him to the hovel he’s staying on the outskirts of town, warns him not to get in trouble with the gangsters running riot. Erik thinks wearily about intervening, but this isn’t his reality, it’s not his job. And he’s tired, so tired. He sleeps for sixteen hours and wakes up to this Charles prodding him to make sure he’s really not dead again. He tries signaling Merlyn, tries getting back to Otherworld once he’s recovered, but there’s something strange about the fabric of this reality, something weirdly elastic. He can’t break through. He can’t break through.

Charles watches all of this with naked fascination. Erik wears his clothes, though they’re not tall enough or broad enough in the shoulder, and pokes morosely at the fire Charles lights each night.

 _Can you hear me?_ he projects once, but Charles shows no sign of listening.

It’s very lonely inside his head.  
  
  
  
This Charles is not his Charles, but he’s still… lovely.

He does science experiments in what passes for a back garden, building on Mendel’s genetics work, and Erik remembers Charles sitting up in bed, avidly talking about the state of mutation during the time period they lived in, remembers that Charles confessed that he’d been doing a PhD in genetics before he became Captain Britain, and had never finished it. Charles borrows more books than he can carry from the book wagon that stops by every couple of weeks, and does little repairs on machinery for the folks in town. He lives outside, apart from the others, but doesn’t seem to mind it, fascinated with his pea plants and his spaceman and his own solitude.

Gradually, Erik begins telling him stories. It seems wrong, to have this Charles so confined by the limitations of his time. He knows amazing things will happen just sixty years from now; he’s caught glimpses of an even shinier and more wonderful future through the portals to other realities. If all he can give this Charles is stories of the stars, he will. Charles thinks he’s making it all up, of course; he tells him several times that he should write, that he would dash anything Jules Verne could come up with to the ground. But Erik just smiles and looks away and misses his own.

One night, Charles kisses him over the fire, and Erik kisses back.  
  
  
  
_Erik?_ he hears one night, and he gets out of bed, drawing the covers securely back over Charles when he shivers—the nights can get cold here, on the edges of the desert—and walks outside. And there, in full Captain Britain regalia, is Charles. His Charles. He would know him in anywhere.

 _I’ve been looking for you for so long,_ Charles thinks, and the loneliness he tastes on Charles’s tongue stings, aches like bitter fruit. _The multiverse is restored, but there are pockets of reality disconnected from Otherworld. I knew you had to be in one, or you’d have found me. So I found you._

Erik says nothing, just puts his arms around Charles and breathes him in.

 _Come on,_ Charles thinks, taking his hand. _Come with me. Come home._

“Erik?” he hears from behind him, and he closes his eyes.

Charles, this Charles—his Charles too, in a way, now—looks at this stranger, dressed in the same red, white, and blue that Erik had crashed down from the stars in, and understands. “I always knew I’d have to return you to the stars someday,” he says lowly. His Charles’s hand tightens in his own.

“Charles,” Erik says, wrecked. “I have loved you.”

“And I you,” Charles from 1892 tells him, and reaches out and squeezes his free hand, and there, suspended between the men he loves, Erik considers staying. He considers giving up the Amulet, letting someone else be Captain Britain, spending the rest of his life in America telling Charles stories about the future he’ll never see, trying to give him a glimpse of the beauty and wildness that is out there just beyond his reach. But he looks back. He looks back and into his Charles’s eyes, and realizes that he’s still been thinking of him as _his Charles,_ after all this time, and thinks of chess games and books in bed and his responsibilities and the lives in his hands and he realizes. It was never a choice at all.

But the other Charles’s kiss lingers on his lips long after they return to Otherworld. Long after the stars have changed to the skies over Avalon. Long after he has slipped into his own clothes and become Captain Britain again, and he thinks: the multiverse is a very cruel, very beautiful place, and it is his job to protect it. To protect every Charles, everywhere.

**Author's Note:**

> We were talking about how the latest Excalibur heavily implies there's a world out there where each X-Man is Captain Britain when  
> STEP ([InsertSthMeaningful](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful)): cherik as captain britains  
> ME, INTERNALLY: i hate you
> 
> "Through Adversity to the Stars" is the motto of the Royal Air Force. Captain Britain can fly, so I thought it was fitting.
> 
> I am at tumblr as [homoethics](https://homoethics.tumblr.com/) or on the [discord server.](https://discord.gg/7HyhZ5R) Please comment; constructive criticism welcome.


End file.
